Sunday, 8 December 2013

Mala Tempora Set Review - Runner Cards

Yesterday I looked through the spoilers released from Mala Tempora of the Corporation cards, and I'm following up with the Runner cards today.Colour me several shades of unimpressed but you may find that my naturally curmudgeonly outlook gets even more of an airing than usual as I look at what Runners have been given to combat the Power Shutdowns and Accelerated Developments of this world...

Reina Roja

Reina Roja has been printed specifically to be the best
Anarch ID. That's her function. Unless you have a really good
reason to play Noise or Whizzard then Roja should be your default choice. Her ability is a very solid economic benefit
which can be further turned into a deck strategy with cards such as Rook or
Xanadu, taxing the Corp for rezzing Ice to keep her out, but really what
matters is that she’s just better than the other options (including coming with
1 link).

Anarch as a faction still needs help – I’m not buying Caissa
as a serious thing – but Reina Roja will be played a lot.

Knight

Most of the Caissa are pretty uninspiring and while Knight
has it’s uses it also has plenty of limitations. In the early game having an Icebreaker that
can tutor onto a specific piece of Ice to ensure access, no matter the Ice
type, helps you to get through with your first few runs. Ultimately, though, I feel like diverting to
Knight in the early game probably just distracts you from setting up your final
desired rig. I think I can see where
decks would play a single Knight to search up with Test Run/SMC to break
specific problem pieces of Ice, but with 2 to break each subroutine the Knight
isn’t actually that efficient at breaking any decently sized piece of Ice – 8 for
an Archer, 4 for an Eli – it’s not like Knight presents an efficient breaker
for the fact it only works on one piece of Ice, and you have to admit that
trading 1MU for a single piece of Ice being broken isn’t terribly efficient
either.

Deep Red

Deep Red’s usefulness depends 100% on whether a deck with a
ton of Caissa will actually be any good.
I’m pretty sure that it won’t be, although there could be a killer
Caissa that we haven’t see yet. Anarchs
already have Grimoire to support virus decks in a similar way and that’s hardly
set the world ablaze. I may be
downselling the Caissa as a whole but so far the only one I really like is
Rook, so the idea of playing enough of them to make it necessary to rely on
something like Deep Red to provide the MU to install them all… sounds pretty
horrible. Shouldn’t you just have played
Mimic and Datasucker instead?

Running Interference

Running Interference is an expensive way of running but adds
another strong tool to the Criminal’s already-bulging toolbox of ways to
invalidate and frustrate the Corp’s defences.
I’m not sure there’s much space for this alongside the Inside Jobs and
Emergency Shutdowns already played but I think we can expect to see 1 or 2
copies crop up for when the Criminals absolutely want to make sure they break
into a server. What I keep having in the
back of my mind is that pretty soon we’re also going to have Blackmail available,
which is both 75% cheaper than Running Interference and much more effective. It’s hard to rate this card too highly when
you know it’s about to get severely outclassed.

Expert Schedule Analyser

No. Just no. I’m kind of onboard with the effect, but
making it take up precious MU and then make it an effect that you have to click
for, so you can’t overlay this effect with a Sneakdoor Beta, or Dirty Laundry,
or Inside Job, or anything interesting.
No, you can only use this effect if you announced in advance that you
weren’t interested in scoring Agendas or anything like that, and just wanted a
look

around.

Grifter

Criminals don’t need much help at the moment, which is good
because Grifter really doesn’t offer much by way of help. Compared to existing cards like Compromised
Employee or Desperado the Grifter gives you cash back much more slowly, offers
no secondary benefits and will trash itself the second you don’t manage a
successful run that turn.

The Woman In The Red Dress

This is a card that is pretty hard to judge the usefulness
of. Each turn you get to see the top
card of R&D and the Corp can choose to draw it. You gain information about what is coming but
the Corp has control over that information.
If they’re worried about R&D dig and you reveal an untrashable piece
of Ice they will be happy to leave it there, but if it’s an Agenda they can
choose to pull it into HQ. Yes, you now
know there’s an Agenda in HQ but Shapers tend to be more focussed on R&D
accesses. On the surface I don’t think
there’s much use for this but that it’s unique and comes with a high Influence
cost makes me think I may be misunderstanding this card or missing a key
interaction – why else would it come with those restrictions attached?

If you know what I’m missing let me know, please!

Torch

Torch is a really expensive alternative to Gordian Blade,
asking you to pay just over twice as much for a Decoder a lot less than twice
as good. Most players and decks will
correctly forget about Torch but there are a couple of examples of occasions
where you’re going to want to pack a Torch as an option. The first is Kit decks, which will get much
more value out of that initial investment in a big Decoder, and the second is
decks that have some way of ‘cheating’ install costs on Icebreakers (eg.
Retrieval Run, Stimhack/Self-Modifying Code or Test Run/Scavenge). Once in play Torch is very good, and if the
additional cost over Gordian Blade isn’t a real obstacle then… why not?

My Kit deck currently uses Stimhack/Self-Modifying Code and
I will be packing 1 copy of Torch as a search target. Once it’s in play I’ll quickly reap the
rewards of increasingly efficient running from all the Code Gates I give to the
Corp.

Raymond Flint

I’m not sure about Raymond.
If Bad Publicity becomes a thing he might be semi-ok but even then you’re
going to be giving the Corp advance warning of your HQ access and they can
probably choose to gain Bad Publicity at a time that minimises the risk of the
access hurting them. Outside of that he’s
a bad alternative to Infiltration and not many people even play that any more.

Nice hat.

And that's Mala Tempora. Aside from the arrival of Reina Roja I don't think we find much here for the Runner, certainly nothing as fundamental as Power Shutdown or Ppaper Wall, or as potentially devastating as Accelerated Development. Still, for most players Roja alone will be justification enough for Mala Tempora existing.

About The Author

David Sutcliffe has over 20 years experience of competitive TCG, LCGs and Miniatures gaming since 2000 he has written for a number of outlets, including official strategy analysis and event coverage for Magic: The Gathering and the World of Warcraft TCG from World and Continental Championships, Pro Tours, Grand Prix and Darkmoon Faires.

In December 2015 he ended his long love affair with shuffling cardboard and switched to rolling dice instead. David has moved over to the X-Wing Miniatures Game to begin his new blog about that game: Stay On The Leader.